1 The Manimekhalai knew the story as the Kasmirian Somadeva knew it, referring to the imprisonment of Udayana, the Vatsaraja, in Ujjain, and the stratagem by which Yaugandharayana brought about his escape.

2 This can be otherwise explained as due to copying the older northorn tradition irrespective of the date of the work containing the reference.

From what has already been said above, it is clear that the Tamils of South India had commenced their colonial enterprise across the Bay of Bengal earlier than we know anything of. The familiarity with which Savakam and the voyages thereto are spoken of, and the description of the imports into the port of Tondi in the Ramnad District and Kaveripatam at the mouth of the river Kaveri, which answer detail after detail to what we learn from the Periplus and Ptolemy, warrant the inference that the Tamils had an established system of over-seas trade on this side of the coast of the peninsula. Taken as a whole then, the knowledge we gain of the over-seas enterprise of the Tamils reaches back to times perhaps centuries before the age of the classical literature from which these details are gained. The ship coins of the Andhras whose provenance according to Sir Walter Elliot is the coast region between the two Pennars, north and south, the region pre-eminently of a class of people known by the name Tiraiyar, goes only to confirm what we learn from Tamil literature. What is more we hear of a class of merchants described in Tamil as ma-sattu-vanigam (Sans, maha-sartha-vanik) as great sea-going merchants, indicates the existence of a class of people whose profession it was to trade overseas. When actually this communication began we are not in a position to state, but that there was something like a settled communication and regular voyage of commerce cannot be doubted. This prevalence of communication between

South India on the one side and the Malaya peninsula and the islands on the other, is confirmed in a very unlooked-for fashion by the recently discovered Koetei inscription to which we have already referred. That Brahmans emigrated to the distant east, as far east as the east coast of Borneo, and the character of the emigrant colony, make it indubitable that this was an emigration from South India, probably from the region of the early Pallavas.

Among the ruins of monuments discovered all over this region, both in Further India and the islands, the general position seems to be that the earliest monuments have reference to the worship of Vishnu, according to recognised authorities. Saivism followed, these two being followed later by Buddhism. This order of succession not necessarily exclusively so, seems to be the case in regard to further India as far as exploration work has gone on there. A similar conclusion seems warranted from ail that we know of monumental Java as the position is explained by the explicit statement of Fa-hien in regard to his own Java which must be the same as Ptolemy's Sabadiu and the Tamil Savakam. That this Java is Sumatra and not the island Java, as we know at present, may now be stated with confidence for the following reasons, summarised by Colonel Gerini as a result of an elaborate investigation in his researches on Ptolemy's Geography, pp. 462.

"As to the name Java being applied to the whole or part of Sumatra, we have the evidence, (1) of the Kedah Annals (Ch. 13, Low's translation in Journal of Indian Archipelago, Vol. 1ll) that Achin or Acheh, was called the country of Jawi (Javi); (2) of lbn Batuta, who records Sumatra in 1345-46 under the name of "Island of Jawah (or Java)" (See "Defremrey and Sanguinetti," Ed. and Trans., Vol., IV, p. 228) and (3) the still more decisive and far older testimony of the Pagar-ruyang inscription in the central part of the island (Menang-Kabau district), dating from A.D. 656, where King Aditya-dharma is called the ruler of the "First (or Primeval) land of Java," Prathama-Yava-Bhu, meaning, apparently, the first kingdom founded by the Yava or Java race in Sumatra, or, still better, in the Archipelago (see J. Pom. R.A.S., June 1861, Appendix, p. lxvii). It should moreover be noted that the natives of Nias speak of the Malays of Sumatra as Dawa, a term which evidently is but a corruption of Jawa or Java, especially as the Battak apply to the same people on their borders the slightly different denomination of Jau."

This Savakam was known to the Tamils as a kingdom ruled over by a king by a name Bhumi - chandra. The name of his queen was Amara Sundari and both of them brought up a child, an avatar of Buddha, somewhat miraculously born of a cow. But the geographical detail in connection with this story is that it had for its capital a town known as Nagapuram (see Manimekhalai). Colonel Gerini in his Researches labours hard to explain what Ptolemy's Argyre,1 the capital of his Iabadiu or Savadiu actually was, and identifies it with Achin or Acheh on the northwest coast of Java. If Nagapuram was the capital of Savagam, the capital of Sabadiu must be the equivalent of Nagapuram. Ptolemy's Argyre does not come any way near it at first sight, but this Nagapuram passes by the alternative designation Bhogavatipura, and has yet another alternative Uragapura which comes nearest to Argyre. It is well known that Kalidasa speaks of the capital of the Pandyas as Uragapura,2 meaning thereby that the capital of the Pandyas was in his time known Uragapura. To the classical Tamils, although Madura is by far the most familiar, the term Alavay or Halasya (abr. of Hala-halasya) was not unfamiliar. If the Tamil name Savakam was due to Tamil, the capital may well be ascribed to the same source, and if the capital city had been founded under the auspices of Madura, it might well take the name Uragapura giving Ptolemy his equivalent Argyre. Whether Uragapura in its alternative form

1 Opus, cit., pp. 656. if.

2 Raghuvamsa, Canto VI, Sloka 59.

Bhogavatipura is actually responsible for the term Srl-Bhoja for the later capital of Sumatra is more than we can assert at present. Hence it would be more reasonable from every point of view to regard Sumatra as the "Prathama Yava," the other island Java being so called by the immigrants from this original Java. As we pass from Fa-hien to the other Chinese traveller to whom we are indebted for a considerable volume of information regarding Java, we find a different state of things from the point of view of religion. This traveller I-tsing left the Shantung peninsula in a Persian ship and came down to Srl-Bhoja; proceeded from there to Tamra-lipti and travelled therefrom in India learning Sanskrit and collecting manuscripts bearing on Buddhism. Having lived a number of years in India,hereturn-ed to Sri-Bhoja with hundreds of manuscripts. After taking a holiday home, he returned with several collaborators to Sri-Bhoja. He stayed some years there and completed the translations of several of the manuscripts he had collected and sent home 500 volumes of translations. He settled down in Sri-Bhoja for the obvious reason that he commanded the convenience for carrying on his literary labours. The period of his travels cover the last quarter of the seventh century. He then found the kingdom of Sri-Bhoja which exercised authority not only over its own territory, but over the islands and principalities across the straits in the Malaya peninsula, so that we might say that the period of expansion of the kingdom of Sri-Bhoja had already begun. He was hospitably treated and was provided with a state ship by the Maharajah of Sri-Bhoja, who apparently supplied him with all requirements for conducting his literary labours after his return from India. The country was then essentially Buddhist. The change from just the beginnings of Buddhistic influence in the age of Fa-hien, to the dominance of Buddhism during I-tsing's stay in the island, gives us clearly to understand that the intervening centuries, the fifth, sixth and the seventh centuries of the Christian era, constitute the period of Buddhistic outspread in this region. It may be due to the influence of Buddhistic scholars like Buddha ghosha, who is said to have travelled from Ceylon to Burma on a religious mission. Either he himself or others like him, before and after, were responsible for this expansion of Buddhism. This does not seem unlikely as we know that the sixth century South India contributed three successive principals to the Nalanda University of whom perhaps the most distinguished was Dharmapala of Kanchi. When Hiuen-tsang was in Kanchi, he had to cancel the project of going to Ceylon, where he wanted to learn certain parts of the Buddhist Vinaya. During his stay in Kanchi there arrived a number of Buddhist divines from Ceylon to Kanchi and they told him that the island was so disturbed by internecine war that it would not be worth his while going there then. When he told them what exactly his mission was, they undertook to instruct him themselves as they were by far the most learned in that particular section. This disturbed state of the country relates to the middle of the seventh century. Some of the Buddhists from Ceylon might have found asylum in Sri-Bhoja, and that perhaps was the reason why in I-tsing's days Sri-Bhoja had become a great Buddhist centre. Whatever the cause, Sri-Bhoja in which I-tsing stayed was an important Buddhist centre where he could carry on his literary labours quite as well as in Nalanda itself, the climate of which was unsuitable to the Chinese scholar. Hence we see the outspread of religion from South India into the islands of the Archipelago probably was in the same order chronologically as in the case of Further India, namely, Vaishnavism, Saivism, and Buddhism, and that is what we discovered is the exact order in respect of the archaeological monuments in Java. The most remarkable ones such as the Boro-Boudur are entirely Buddhist and this Java monument is described by competent authority (such as Prof. Foucher) to belong to the eighth or the ninth century A.D. In the central province of Java however on the heights of the mountains could be discovered ruins of temples dedicated to Siva considered to belong to a period not later than the seventh or the eighth century. In the western part of Sumatra island however, Sanskrit inscriptions of a Vaishnava character have been found. And these are ascribed to the period about A.D. 450 to 600. This according to Colonel Gerini indicates the order of religious overflow from Sumatra into Java. This, so far from the point of view of India, is essentially a question of wherefrom the emigrants started and to what particular region of South India they belonged. Vaishnavism and Saivism flourished side by side at the dawn of the Christian era and they could both of them have gone eastwards at any time since that period. If it should have been that the first colony went from the region of the Pallavas that is from the country extending from the mouth of the Krishna to that of the S. Pennar, naturally Vaishnavism would have been established first. Whatever was the origin of this chronological order, there is no question about the order itself. The Koetei inscription is evidence of the spread of Vedic Brahmans from South India. The Takopa inscription on a stone found near the mouth of the river Takopa in the Malaya Peninsula is again in Pallava characters of the seventh or the early eighth century, and relates to a Vishnu temple of Narayana Venugopala on the top of a hill called Narayana higher up the river. The actual purport of this inscription is the construction of a tank near the temple, and the placing of it under the protection of certain communities of people described as Sena-mukham, Manigramam, and Chapattar (?). The first seems to refer to a military force, Sena-mukham being explained as "the Royal Guards"; Manigramam is a well-known mercantile community of the west coast and "Chapattar," the last, if the reading of the first part is quite correct fit is rather doubtful), would mean "body of archers." Manigramam is certain indication of a colony from the west coast. The origin of the colony would explain the Vaishnava character of the settlement. So far then we see the influence of South India to have continued intact, and the period ranging from before the days of Ptolemy right on to the beginning of the tenth century almost may be regarded as the period of the greatest South Indian influence in this part of Asia.